Colin Firth wears a TAG Heuer Connected

Harry Hart aims a machine gun across the handle of his umbrella, glasses on, a watch on his firing wrist. Colin Firth's gentleman spy was shot in the head in the first Kingsman film, and Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) revives him the way the sequel's plot demands: saved by Statesman nanotechnology, left with amnesia, and folded back into a war between the crippled Kingsman agency, its American counterpart Statesman, and Poppy Adams' Golden Circle cartel.

The watch on his wrist is the franchise's loudest product decision. In the first film the Kingsman-issue watch was a mechanical Bremont; for the sequel, aBlogtoWatch reported, the Bremonts were "replaced by TAG Heuer's Connected Modular 45 in Kingsman-exclusive livery," an actual smartwatch brought in at the director's request. Vaughn picked it himself, and in TAG Heuer's partnership announcement he explained the choice: "We needed a connected watch for our agents. We looked at the different options available, but none of them were elegant enough for a Kingsman. Then I saw an interview on Bloomberg TV with Jean-Claude Biver about his connected watch, and it became immediately obvious; the Kingsman agents would wear the TAG Heuer Connected." The Kingsman Special Edition carries rose gold lugs, blue or grey dials with the inverted-K insignia, a bridle leather strap plus an orange second strap matching Eggsy's smoking jacket, and a rose gold K that animates across the dial twice a day at 10:10. Even the Android Wear flashlight fires a Kingsman logo, an effect aBlogtoWatch likened to the Bat-Signal.

The commerce ran ahead of the picture. TAG Heuer put the Special Edition on sale exclusively through Mr Porter at $3,650 on July 6, 2017, eleven weeks before the film opened on September 22. Quill & Pad, surveying the year's movie watches, summed the deal up plainly: "having your watch featured in a blockbuster movie these days is big business."